


men who are also wolves

by brophigenia



Series: emptiness [1]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Canon Era, Grinding, Hand Jobs, M/M, ambiguous infidelity, ten duel commandments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 16:58:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9831398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brophigenia/pseuds/brophigenia
Summary: Laurens writhes under his attention, shivers every time he brushes a sweet close-mouthed kiss over his sweat-slick throat, and finally finds completion after he saysJohn, my dearestinto one shell-like ear, overcome utterly by the picture that Laurens makes, all golden skin and riotous curls and parted, wet lips the exact color of fresh-picked summer strawberries.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know.
> 
> Eliza knows, Eliza doesn't know, imagine what you want.

He dressed in his best for the duel, hands shaking. Lafayette had commented-- he had said  _ are you afraid, mon ami?  _ and Laurens had grunted noncommittally as he tied his cravat in the corner of their shared room, because the answer was not a polite one. 

_ No,  _ he would have said, were he being indelicate.  _ I’m excited.  _

Because he was. Excited. He’d volunteered for this. He’d said  _ Alexander, you’re the closest friend I’ve got  _ because he ached at the thought of it-- of dueling, of firing upon Lee, that contemptuous coward who did not deserve the position granted him by their Major General and who had the nerve to blame that great man for his own failings, but most of all, of being of service to his… his  _ friend,  _ his closest companion, the man who knew his soul above all others save the Maker. 

_ Laurens--  _ and he’d stood to attention, eyes blazing, the back of his neck hot, as Alexander commanded him to  _ not throw away your shot.  _

As he stood there, pistol in hand, watching Alexander speak to Burr, he felt calm. Or, if not calm, then definitely not scared. He didn’t feel  _ scared _ , but his pulse still thrummed in his throat and he kept having to swallow thickly around the kind of noise that he and his cousins all used to holler when they played as children back home, a wild war-whoop characteristic of the men of his blood. 

He did not wish for Alexander’s quick talking and Burr’s endless diplomacy to result in a truce. In fact, in the pit of his stomach, he wished for the opposite- he  _ wanted  _ this. His heart was hammering and the soles of his feet felt icy cold and there was a shiver threatening to rise through his chest but he had never felt so  _ alive  _ as he did with his hand wrapped around one of Lafayette’s silver-chased pistols and his eyes locked on Lee’s, across the field, lit from the right by the dawn sun, Alexander’s dulcet tones rumbling just within earshot.

When they took their paces and counted to ten, it was like a total clarity had fallen down upon him-- everything was sharper, every dust mote they kicked up with their bootheels seemed to hang in the air a second longer, every breath he took seemed to taste sweeter than ever before. Laurens’ blood  _ roiled  _ in his veins, singing out.  _ Eight, nine,  _ exhale,  _ ten paces, fire--  _

He thought it’d be difficult, turning and firing with any precision. It wasn’t. It felt like minutes, not seconds- it felt like everything in his life had just been a prelude to this, a prelude to whirling and aiming and squeezing the trigger, being half-deafened by two simultaneous gunshots, not realizing he hadn’t been shot for more than a couple of breaths, blood rushing so loud that he could feel it battering his temples from the inside.

The bullet makes a thick, lush sound when it pierces Lee’s side. Or maybe he just imagines it does, extrapolating from years of boyhood hunts, taking down squirrels and rabbits and, as he got older and steadier with a rifle, deer. He cannot hear the bullet enter Lee’s body but he imagines its entry is not unlike a trowel in tilled garden soil, imprecise yet invading. 

Laurens breathes through the adrenaline, huffs a silent laugh through the bone-deep syrupy pleasure that is emanating from his numb, white-knuckled pistol hand and moving in waves through the rest of him.  _ Lee, do you yield?  _ Alexander shouts, sounding for all the world like he hopes the answer is  _ no.  _ No doubt his countenance is a cheerful one, yet sharp with teeth and full of the kind of rosy glow he always gets when he’s gotten his way. Burr bellows back, and Laurens scoffs at the answer, the implication that they’re insane for even asking.  _ I’m satisfied,  _ he calls back, only half a lie, willing to let it die. He  _ is  _ satisfied- only, he could be  _ more  _ so. 

Another round might cause him to spend in his breeches, though, so perhaps it’s best that the General comes blazing into the scene. Laurens’ chest is heaving beneath his coat and Alexander lays a hot hand against it, giving him a little push, telling him to go before he incriminates himself further. And he goes, stumbling a bit, because the pleasure of having Alex touch him while he was in this state had his head swimming, detached from the rest of him. 

The upper hallway of the stately house they're quartering in is far enough away from the General’s office that Laurens can't make out what they're saying, once he slips in the back door and creeps up the servants’ stairwell, but close enough that he can hear the blurry sound of their words. Alexander rails- his learned and earnest tones have slipped a bit, the way they do when he's got blood on his lip and bruises on his knuckles and they've just been kicked out of a tavern or meeting hall or, memorably, a church, and he's snarling about how they should go back and keep fighting,  _ always  _ keep fighting. The General’s tone is lower, more menacing, like a great growling dog, and they go back and forth until Alexander shouts and everything goes quiet. 

Laurens rests with his back to the wood paneling of the dim hall, tipping his head back and concentrating on steadying his breath. His whole body is a livewire yet, and he feels like he’s been struck by lightning, irrevocably changed. 

He almost misses the sound of Alexander thundering up the stairs, but not quite- he rolls his head to the side to look at him, his cheek pressing against the cool wood the only way he knows for sure that his cheeks are flushed and hot. “Alex,” he murmurs, not smiling but so  _ pleased  _ to see his best friend, even with Alexander’s eyes blazing and cold and his shoulders tight. Maybe more so because of that tension and rage-- Alexander is at his best when he's furious. He's a star burning bright like this. 

“Laurens,” is the reply that comes, stilted, like he doesn't have any words, so unlike him. Laurens tips his hips forward a little, tongue darting out to swipe against his lower lip and taste the salt of sweat there. Alexander’s eyes track the movement, and all of a sudden he's stepping forward, muscling the other man back with his smaller, wirier frame until he's flat to the wall and panting softly, sucking on his own full lower lip to muffle the sounds that want to escape. 

For a few breaths, Alexander doesn't make a move, just presses up against Laurens’ front and breathes in the air he exhales, stares at his closest companion, takes in the way he smells sharply of soap and gunpowder and how blown his pupils are, his irises just a thin sliver of bourbon around the endless obsidian pits of them. Wildly and boldly surveys the feel of his body, muscled and thick where Eliza and his past dalliances had been soft and slim. 

He could draw back and pretend that none of this happened-- go on to the small corner room that houses his and his friends’ meager belongings, pack his and leave immediately. Go home to Eliza and their little apartments, watch his high society, golden-hearted wife try to accustom herself to living without servants to assist her in cooking and cleaning. 

He considers this, and then Laurens’ thighs spasm against his own where he'd shoved it between them in his fit of impulsively wanton physicality, and he decides. 

Laurens’ mouth is swollen and wet from where he'd been sucking and biting on it needily, and he tastes like nothing much except heat. As soon as their lips connect he opens up for Hamilton’s tongue beautifully, thighs quivering and head swimming with abject desire.  _ This _ , he thinks deliriously-- all of this, he'd walk through hell a thousand more times, fight a thousand more battles knee deep in the stench of blood and shit and vomit from dead and dying enemies and compatriots all around. All for the press of Alex’s body against his own, this eden carved out in the shadows of some anonymous house in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania. A thousand more Monmouths for Alexander Hamilton.

For a few minutes that’s all there is, trembling with long-withheld need up against each other and kissing messily up against the hall. And then Laurens’ hips flex, seeking friction and finding it in the hollow of Alex’s hipbone, protruding from his thin frame all the more prominently in this time of stretched wartime rations and miles of hard road to march several times a week. This unconscious reflex drives the temperature higher, ten, twenty degrees of heat suddenly falling on them, leeching into the air between them as they mindlessly try to cut that miniscule divisionary space in half.

_ Alex,  _ he wants to shout, he wants to tear his own heart from his chest in his passion. He doesn’t, because secrecy is paramount in this- he whimpers into Alex’s cheek instead, mouth opening, panting hot and wet against the stubble that had grown there since yesterday morning’s shave, listening to how the other man is whispering a litany of precious filth to his hair, the thin skin beneath his ear and the hinge of his jaw. 

Alexander’s hips drive forward, his hands bruising tight on Laurens’ bicep and thigh, and he’s blinded with pleasure that never ceases-- until it does. He finishes in his fine white breeches and grunts through it, dizzy and useless until he registers that Laurens is still seeking, whining through his teeth and trembling all over so hard that he seems like he might just collapse in on himself. 

He comes alive enough to shove his hand down the tight waistband of Laurens’ fly-fronts, curl his fingers around the thick length he finds there, using the man’s own pre-quintessence to ease the way, and Laurens writhes under his attention, shivers every time he brushes a sweet close-mouthed kiss over his sweat-slick throat, and finally finds completion after he says  _ John, my dearest  _ into one shell-like ear, overcome utterly by the picture that Laurens makes, all golden skin and riotous curls and parted, wet lips the exact color of fresh-picked summer strawberries. 

“ _ Alexander _ ,” Laurens murmurs in wonder, eyes closed in bliss, seed coating his friend’s pen-calloused hand. And he’s so lovely that it brings a thick ache to Hamilton’s throat just to look at him. He wants to stay in this moment-- this perfect moment of stupefied joy with the mortal coil of  woes and complications forgotten and unimportant. 

The sound of heavy bootfalls on the stairs startles them both and ends their eden abruptly, both of them straightening and turning towards the sound. 

“Mon ami!” Lafayette cries, and rushes forward to clasp Hamilton’s shoulder, not noticing their flushed cheeks or the way that Hamilton shoves his right hand into his pocket, still curved into a fist. And just like that, it’s over. 


End file.
